THE TWO-STEP FLOW OF COMMUNICATION
A report called The People´s Choice* was made after analysing the process of decision-making during the course of an election campaign in 1940. After the analysis the authors suggested that the flow of mass communications may be less direct than was commonly supposed. Authors of The People Choice proposed the following Hypothesis: Influences deriving from the mass media first reach “opinion leaders” who, in turn, pass on what they read and hear to those of their everyday associates from whom they are influential. And that Hypothesis was called: “THE TWO-STEP FLOW OF COMMNICATION”

Authors themselves intrigued by its implications for: • Democratic society: • They say it was better that people were more persuaded by the interaction with other people and that the influence of mass media was less automatic and less potent than had been assumed. • Social theory and communications research: • Hypothesis suggested that the image of modern urban society needed revision: image of the audience as a mass of disconnected individuals hooked up to the media but not to each other.

IMPACTS OF THE HYPOTHESIS

• The hypothesis in The People´s Choice, however, was not very well documented by empirical data:
• The design of the study did not anticipate the importance which interpersonal relations would assume in the analysis of the data. • Interpersonal influence really attracted the attention of many researches of different kind, not just mass media researches: • Several studies in the following 17 years were conducted in Columbia University to examine the hypothesis and to build upon it. • 4 of those researches selected in the report for a review:
• Merton´s study of interpersonal influence and communications behaviour in Rovere (1949). Decatur study of decision-making in marketing, fashions, movie-going, and public affairs by Katz and